


I See Better From a Distance

by sarcastical



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Carson's Travelling Circus, Child Abuse, Deaf Character, Empath, Hurt Clint Barton, M/M, Mind Reading, Mutant Clint Barton, Not Beta Read, Oops, maybe fluff later idk, this got quite dark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:00:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8318326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcastical/pseuds/sarcastical
Summary: The famous mercenary Hawkeye has a secret - a reason for staying at a distance - but if experience has taught him anything it's not to show it.





	1. Every Hero has an Origin Story

He had been seven when it started. 

One last blow to the ears and suddenly there was nothing – none of the incessant humming that he had come to find comforting, find safe. Only silence. Then his father’s fist connecting again and Clint heard a wave of HURT SMASH BREAK PAIN, his father’s knuckles crashing into his arms where he lay shielding his ears. It was so loud, so incredibly loud. And then silence.

Clint lay there, sobbing silently. Everything he did was silent now. He could feel the floorboards shifting underneath his chest as his father moved away. Felt the slam of the door vibrate against his collarbone and reverberate around his bones. But not a noise penetrated his cocoon. He could still remember the feeling though – however abruptly it had come and gone – a relentless throbbing of rage.

He lay there for hours.

When someone finally came, he didn’t recognise them. The police-officer’s hands were gentle as he lifted Clint off the floor but Clint still shied away from the torrent of ANGER BOREDOM LONELY that echoed round his ear-drums, a discordant hum of empty space coloured by anger. Fought to get out of the man’s grip, away from the terrible sounds which intruded into his sterile little bubble. The police officer didn’t let go, held on to the squirming boy, but as his hands shifted onto fabric the nose quietened and Clint let himself be dragged along, deaf to everything but the discordant hums which drifted through his ears and grated along his skull. Each bone began to let out its own little howl of complaint to match, groans silent to everyone but him as his body began to shriek from the beating – a pain which the murmur of EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY echoing through the policeman’s hands did nothing to quell. Clint began to cry.  
…  
Two days later Clint, along with his brother Barney, were taken to a group home 70 miles away. Both boys held themselves carefully, gritted teeth against the pain which still ached in their bones, but Clint was also silent. The doctor’s had pronounced him deaf, but with no sign-language or lip-reading no one was sure whether he understood them. They had tried explaining it through writing but Barney had just looked at them like they were stupid and told them he couldn’t read. That was why their father hit him in the ears he explained, he was dumb. So the doctor’s had written a note in his file, recommended that someone made sure he was taught both ASL and to read and write and allowed the two boys to be taken away. 

Clint knew his ears had gone wrong. He suspected that the piece of paper they had tried to show him had been telling him that. But he still didn’t know why the doctors where suddenly so noisy. Every time their cool, impersonal hands touched him he could feel them screaming at him HUNGRY BORED KIDS SHAME PAIN TIRED coupled with hundreds of emotions that he didn’t know, hot cold feelings that crawled in his gut and made him want to hide, angry itching emotions that growled under his skin. Even Barney was screaming, a chorus of HURT SMASH BREAK PAIN that made Clint flinch away, even though it simmered and boiled in a manner dissimilar to the riot of his father’s yell. 

So Clint withdrew, deep inside his head, flinching away from the hands, always the hands. Once at the home he avoided the kids, the group activities, the woman with her kind smile and the man with the grin of a shark – whose arm as it wrapped its way around Clint had sent waves of the uneasy hot feeling crashing across him. That one even Barney was scared of, Clint could feel it. 

They had put him in lessons. Once a week, they sat him down and pointed at pictures, a cloud, a pig, a dog – they made funny symbols with their hands and pointed out words, making strange large motions with their mouth. Clint wanted to understand, stared desperately at the symbols – committing them to memory – until he could hear he wouldn’t be able to ask why everyone was screaming at him, what they were saying.

Eventually he learnt. And as he learnt he retreated. 

…

Phil Coulson was going to get promoted to level 6. He had caught Hawkeye.

He had taken over the operation after months of failed extractions, attempts to offer the mercenary jobs, attempts to take him out. Previous to him, they had all failed. Hawkeye was incredible, some of his jobs were legendary about SHIELD, he was just an enforcer after all, a gun for hire amongst the mobs, but his shots, his shots. When Fury had first tasked a team with bringing him in or taking them down nobody had heard of Hawkeye, but as they tried and failed yet again to bring in the assassin his legend had grown. 

For their first attempt they had sent a probationary agent, Grant Ward, in to talk to Barton. Gonzales had been running point on the investigation and had figured, buy the kid a burger, sit him down, offer a roof over his head and a clean sheet and the kid would be theirs. Figured they could always threaten him afterwards. Problem was, while the rookie initially did well, target narrowing his eyes but agreeing to sit down, allowing him to order food, grimacing uncomfortably but laughing it off when a waitress bumped into him, he seemed unresponsive half the time. Halfway through the meal Ward’s hand had brushed against his and suddenly the kid had been up and running. Ward had pursued but lost him when the kid had flipped off of a building and vanished. Gonzales labelled the kid mentally disordered. Problem was, when he initiated the second phase of the investigation the kid seemed to already know where the sniper was waiting with his darts, hitting his own target without ever appearing in the other sniper’s scope. Following that failed mission, after the failure of anyone in the team to find the perch the sniper had used, Gonzales was pulled off the mission.

 

Maria Hill was given him next, her skill for planning ops leading her to devise a string of operations which were initially designed to catch the kid and later to end him but when the kid wasn’t two steps ahead and therefore impossible to find he remained totally unpredictable. On one memorable occasion he actually fled the scene despite the fact he could not have possibly known that the agent he had bumped into was indeed an agent as the woman in question was eight months pregnant at the time and was on her way to meet Maria for lunch – not for the basis of the op. Eventually Maria was promoted onto bigger and better things and Barton’s case was passed on to a never-ending string of handlers whose frustration only increased as the boy became more and more famous in the criminal underworld for his incredible shots and impossible kills. Hell, none of the handlers had even worked out why the bow and arrow.

It was Agent Blake that had made the breakthrough on Hawkeye’s case – connected his use of the name and the bow to a circus act in Carson’s travelling circus and from there to two runaways whom the police had traced there. He had discovered the reason for the archer’s seeming uncaring about what the death threats one irate agent had yelled after being duct-taped to a tree, quite possibly the reason he stared quite so hard at every agent he came into contact with. Hawkeye was Clinton Barton. Clinton Barton was only nineteen. And Clinton Barton was deaf.

Of course many of the agents who had worked the case didn’t believe this. Gonzales in particular having snorted at that assertion but when the time came for Blake to hand off the case Coulson was already starting to make plans. And now a soaking wet, heavily bleeding Hawkeye was lying in their medical ward, cuffed to the bed. 

…

Clint was scared. Terrified honestly. He had been cuffed both around the wrists and the ankles to a hospital bed, view of the room blocked out by a crowd of doctors and nurses who laboured to remove the bullet from his leg. His system, shot through with morphine but still screaming for space, for fear, for running, crashed with pain and he jerked back and forth, held down by a multitude of hands whose messages of FEAR ANGER HAPPY CONTENT AROUSED battered at him as Clint sought refuge in his own head, building little barriers for the emotions and desperately throwing away the words which rolled over him…

‘…dangerous bringing him in here could hurt someone what if Julie well after John I wouldn’t care but the principle of the matter and the resting agents hey what do you think you are doing hold still god its just like…’

It seemed like his life had been and gone before the hands receded, left Clint to lick his wounds and rebuild his mind – separating out the imposter emotions from his own fear and pain. When he could remember his own thoughts again he worked himself up to looking around. He had been moved at some point in the swirl of noise and now he was in a plain white room with an IV, heart monitor and a very solid looking door. Like a magic trick, as soon as he had noticed it, the door clicked open.

Coulson’s first thought on looking at the now captured Hawkeye was that he looked a very sad sight indeed. In a hospital gown his limbs stuck out with sharp edges that spoke of not enough food. Coulson could see mottled bruises and scars, which coloured and discoloured his skin in lumps and clusters. The boy himself looked, well, like a boy. Defiant, injured and afraid. The only part of him that still looked as lethal as the boy’s reputation were those eyes, sharp piercing eyes which pinned him where he stood with their accusatory gaze – ‘You did this to me’ – they screamed. 

The man with the blank face just stood and stared. Then he sat and stared. As hard as Clint looked he couldn’t see any emotions on the man’s face. He just sat there, perfectly passive, perfectly flat. Clint would have said the man was silent, but then everything was to him. Clint stared back, stomach curled in anticipation of something. Anything. He began to wish that the man would touch him just so that he knew what was going on. He could wait for hours on a sniper’s perch but he needed to know what was going to happen, needed something to focus on. 

…

Four hours later and the man had finished talking. Clint didn’t break his stare. To his credit, neither had the man – now introduced as Agent Coulson. ‘Well Mr Barton?’ the suit asked. Frowning, reaching up to re-tuck a loose bandage. Clint schooled his face waiting to stop the flinch in its tracks. It never came. He could feel Coulson, a warm low voice in his ears, but unlike the other voices, it didn’t shout. Instead, all Clint received was a quiet and distant amusement, joy, sadness, pity, regret, love. Coulson withdrew his hand, sat there waiting with a cool expression, but Clint was still marvelling in the warm calm that populated the man, a gentle tune which thrummed along with his own thoughts instead of smothering them. Clint looked up, and said yes.


	2. But So Does Every Villain

Barney Barton was ten years old. Barney lived in a small house in Waverley, Iowa, with his mum, brother and dad. His dad was an asshole. His dad beat his mum and brother and sometimes him. Barney loved his mum and brother. He hated his father. Then his mother and father were gone. Barney was going to protect Clint.  
…

A clump of dirt bounced off the side of Barney’s head, causing him to turn and glare at the older boy who’d thrown it. The boy standing there laughing with two others looked older than him, maybe by two years, but working at the circus had left Barney strong and stocky. He wasn’t afraid. He was never afraid.  
‘I dare you to do that again’, he rumbled – still inordinately proud of the way his voice had broken, leaving him sounding low and threatening. The three boys didn’t seem impressed, scowls crawling up their faces as they unconsciously shifted into a defensive stance.  
‘Oh yeah?’ Scoffed the middle one, the one currently rubbing the dirt off his hand with the edge of a white designer t-shirt. ‘And what exactly are you going to do about it, Carny? We could end you and no one would fucking care. You’re just a loser.’  
Barney lifted the knife out of his pocket and flipped it through his fingers, shoulders pulled back in an attempt to make himself seem bigger. He had wondered away from the site to read – he was determined to get his GED and prove that he could still make something of himself – but now it meant he was too far away to call for help. He would deal with this. Then he would tutor Clint through his GED too and they would move on. That was the plan. In the meantime however…  
‘Come any closer and I’ll show ya what the circus taught me.’  
Then the boy on the right pulled out a knife and they charged.  
…

Barney woke up alone in the woods, an aching pain slicing down his back and a dull throbbing in his head. He could hear sirens echoing up through the trees. Movement crashed all around him, echoing through the woods and through his aching bones. Startled Barney jerked upright, gasping at the sheer NOISE of the movement, a thunder-crack of sound that accompanied his motion and left him shell-shocked. There was a body lying across from him. A boy with wide staring eyes and a white t-shirt streaked with blood and gore. He – it – was so quiet, so… dead. Barney threw up. Then he pulled himself to his feet, the sirens were getting louder, the entire area sang with them now, he needed to get back to the circus, needed to find Clint.  
When he got there the circus was buzzing with activity, it shot through Barney’s skull so that he hissed with pain. He could hear the shouts of Carson himself ‘SOME KIDS BEEN KILLED. WE NEED TO LEAVE NOW BEFORE THE COPS GET HERE. NO I DON’T FUCKING CARE THIS ENTIRE SITE IS GONE IN FIVE MINUTES YOU HEAR ME!’ the cries of the animals, the stamp of feet. But he could also hear Esmerelda, the fortune teller, telling her son Miguel that he needed to be quiet now, stay out of Mr Carson’s way. He could hear Trickshot, telling his brother to stop worrying about Barney ‘Who cares if he’s still missing, that kid is a waste of space anyway.’ He could even hear Jacky, the roustabout who never spoke, just muttered quietly under his breath to himself and occasionally giggled, loading the lorry on the other side of the camp. For a moment Barney just stood there, swaying under the onslaught of noise. Then he remembered. Body. Police sirens. Clint.

…

Once they were into the next state, far from the police Carson called all the boys to meet him. They were all told, on no uncertain terms, that whoever had done it would be thrown to the wolves if the police came for them. That he would personally whoop the arse of whoever had done it if he found them before the police did and throw them out on their ear. That they sure as hell didn’t need the trouble. Then they were all told to get out and Barney was finally able to talk to Clint, whose nervous breathing had spent the entire journey two lorries in front of him, accompanied by the Swordsman’s ragged gulps.  
‘Do you know who did it?’ Signed Clint. ‘The Swordsman said good riddance but Trickshot’s worried it’ll bring the law down on us.’  
‘No idea’, lied Barney. ‘Probably best not to find out, plausible deniability and all that.’  
He paused, ‘Hey Clint, I was thinking, since we are going to be stuck here until the rest of the caravan arrives from the alternate route, perhaps we should catch up on your maths?’  
But Clint was looking sheepish, rubbing his hands together in their gloves. ‘Sorry Barney I can’t… I promised the Swordsman I’d go help him…’  
Barney swallowed. ‘Yeah another time then.’  
…

Eight months later, when Barney found out what the Swordsman had been doing with his brother he killed him. He’d done it before after all. He didn’t tell Clint, who now wore gloves all the time, but still flinched when anyone, when Barney, touched him. Nonetheless, though, Clint grew steadily more distant, caught in the glamour of the show. He was the star now and Barney was just. Just. A few weeks later, he heard Clint whisper to Trickshot, late into the evening across the camp where they shot together – ‘Honestly, he reminds me of my father.’  
So, when Barney turned sixteen he enlisted. He couldn’t help Clint any more. Clint who didn’t want to be helped. He was happier, healthier, without Barney.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what even is an update schedule :/


	3. Obligatory Training Montage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologise for being so incredibly useless at updating.

No-one was really sure whether Hawkeye, now trainee agent Barton, was excelling or failing training. 

Once his leg had healed to an acceptable standard Hawkeye had been sent to the academy to begin training on the advanced course for what many agents jokingly called the ‘problem kids’, a slightly accelerated basic training for future SHIELD operatives coming in from outside and hostile organisations. Barton, however, was unusual even compared to the assortment of newbies he was joining. His skills in hand-to-hand and shooting (although they had yet to give him a bow) were incredible and drew crowds from the student body, but when first presented with a gun, it had become clear that the sniper had never handled one before. Likewise, whilst clearly intelligent, the sniper had never received a GED and displayed a clear reluctance to get one. However, what his superiors noted as most troubling about Barton, was his inability to be around people. Barton was reserved to the point that one teacher had begun to suffer from the illusion that he was mute as well as deaf, the only time he ever willingly touched anyone was to fight them, not always with permission, and on one memorable occasion he had almost garrotted a drunken student from the communications facility when they had stumbled into him drunk and gone for a hug. Paradoxically he succeeded in being both insubordinate and extraordinarily meek and reluctant to question orders. Indeed, as Blake had put it when snortingly looking over the files plastered over Coulson’s desk, he was as well socialised as an oyster and would always follow orders exactly right up until the point he murdered his commanding officer. Sometimes Coulson wondered why he was friends with Blake. Technically, Barton was no longer Coulson’s responsibility, his mission parameters had been fulfilled when he succeeded in bringing the sniper in, the success and failure of Hawkeye, or Clint, as Coulson had begun to call him in his head after one to many long nights hunched over his file searching for a lead, were now the responsibility of his teachers. However, well, Coulson had always struggled with letting go after spending so much time on a case. And that was the problem, he reasoned in his head, he didn’t see the case as finished until Hawkeye was a functioning member of SHIELD, not just a slightly malfunctioning weapon. 

So, when Barton’s supervisors grudgingly signed off on his paperwork to allow him to participate in a level one mission, for experience, Coulson persuaded Maria to assign him as command under the guise of wanting to scout for potential agents for his team (which was absolutely not what he was doing he argued in his head, he just wanted to make sure the kid was alright). 

The kid it transpired, was really not alright.

The mission was nominally a milk-run, although for some reason that word had become so synonymous with disaster and destruction at SHIELD that his protégé Sitwell had actually sent round three separate petitions to rename the easy missions – he was only partially joking. Barton was the assigned sniper on the team, Sitwell was running communications and May was supervising probationary agent Triplett for whom this mission would be the final hurdle to full agent status under his direct supervisor John Garrett (who had been banned from qualifying exercises for potential subordinates following an incident involving a skylight, a group of rogue scientists and a truckload of dynamite). Coulson would be organising the mission and providing back-up in the case of an emergency.

As Barton boarded the plane, Coulson was pleased to see that the sniper had put on some weight, his frame now resembled much less a starving boy and much more an adult operative. What did not please him, on the other hand, was that despite his orders that Barton would be shooting with a bow on this mission, the agent was wearing the thick standard SHIELD tac-suit, as well as gloves, a polo-neck undershirt, and a general variety of restrictive looking clothes that would make it very difficult for the archer to use the bow he had requisitioned. Furthermore, Coulson found it troubling somewhat to see the man so covered up in the middle of August, it spoke of some deep issue ignored by all of the reports he had read. Moreover, Barton ignored even Triplett’s sunny greeting, instead silently standing in his own personal shadow, Coulson found himself wondering if the hearing aids he had been given were working. However, once they had taken off, Coulson called the assembled agents, minus May who was currently flying the plane, to attention and experienced a gratifying jolt in his stomach as Clint fixed him with his eerily powerful stare. Coulson took a deep breathe, and explained the plan.

The plan, as it was initially conceived, ran as follows. There was to be a gala for a Republican senator in a hotel in New York, where a certain sponsor, suspected of being a high-ranking member of a drug ring would be attending. Whilst Agent Barton provided cover from a nearby building, taking advantage of the glass roof for which the venue was advertised, Agent May would provide support as a member of the crowd so that Agent Triplett could plant a bug on the aforementioned sponsor. Agent Sitwell would be on comms and Coulson himself was assigned to assess the performance of Barton and Triplett. The entire operation was so devised as to be absolutely foolproof, with the lowest possible risks to all participants, and the premise was to assess more the attitude and ability to follow protocol of the agents, than performance in stressful conditions. That was the plan.

In actuality, the mission would soon go down as one of the legendary ‘milk-runs’ that would lead to their eventual informal re-Christening by an irate Sitwell as ‘Hellish Eventually Life-Threating Predicaments’ or HELP for short. Suffice to say, any illusions Coulson had about the mission going well were sufficiently crushed when their target was shot by another guest who proceeded to hold the entire crowd to ransom with a concerningly alien looking weapon which would go off at random intervals and was becoming steadily more dangerous. It was at this point, with Agent May doing her best to look frightened and sneaking through the crowd towards the offending man and a stunned Agent Triplett unconscious on the ground that in a completely unrelated turn of events Coulson was kidnapped out of the back of the surveillance van.  
…

Clint wasn’t entirely sure what his official priorities were supposed to be in this situation, the guidelines he had memorised had never covered a situation like this, with an alien threat terrorising two agents and a large civilian body, and a damaged sounding Sitwell dazedly reporting the kidnap of the mission’s commanding officer down the comm line. So, faced with no clear options, Clint went with his gut instinct and took the shot he was sighting down the foreign bow in his arms. He never missed. With the man lying face down in a pool of his own blood, Clint leapt off the side of the building he rested on and gave chase to the rapidly accelerating black van. As he pulled himself out of the dumpster and onto the street, narrowly avoiding a second van driven by a manically cursing Sitwell, Clint was surprised to hear to no order to pull back from May, now the mission’s ranking officer, instead, there was a tentative and incredibly poorly acted - ‘Oh no the comms have broken and we cannot communicate with the team’ - from a seemingly now conscious Triplett, and then a cracking noise as the earpieces went violently off-line. Clint reached out and grabbed onto the back of the comms van and together he and Sitwell raced after Coulson.  
The story of how the legendary Hawkeye and probationary agent Sitwell took down a long-hidden underground cell of Hydra in the heart of New York, saving the lives of level six agent Coulson, the long thought dead Agent Titchmarsh and everyone in a forty mile radius from the dirty bomb activated by the self-destruct timer and deactivated by Agent Sitwell, was all over SHIELD within forty-eight hours of their return. Coulson was surprised it had took that long. He was also surprised to see that, although Sitwell, like all others with a self-preservation instinct, avoided entering the personal space of now probationary Agent Barton (who like Sitwell had been simultaneously punished and commended for the events of the day) the pair seemed to have become friends.


	4. P.A.N.I.C

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the absolutely ridiculous wait. The author has no excuse they are just a bit useless.

Following the events of what Sitwell was now calling ‘Ultimate Milk-run’, Barton had been graduated from the academy to probationary agent status under a rather terrifying level four agent called Victoria Hand. However the only thing that seemed to really change as a result of this was that Clint now had to do ridiculous amounts of paperwork. He hated paperwork. He had been initially worried about his supervisor, having narrowly escaped a man called Garrett whose firm handshake had left his skin crawling, but Hand was… fair. He didn’t exactly like her, she was curt to the extreme, cared little individuals and saw the world in a disconcerting black and white, but she was predictable, respected Clint’s personal space and was good at her job. His new position was also preferable to the academy in that he seemed to have ended up sharing his bunk-room not with a bunch of other probationary agents, but with Sitwell, who had requested Clint after his previous room-mate had started renting outside of the Triskelion. This was significantly superior to bunking with his fellow probies for two reasons: 1. No communal showers, and 2. Coulson. Sitwell was friends with the mysterious Agent and consequently living with (and being friends with) Sitwell meant seeing more of the man. The man with the strangely gentle mind. Not that Clint was in any way interested in him. Shut up.

Even missions had calmed down after his baptism by fire with ‘Ultimate Milk-Run’, instead Clint participated in a series of basic reconnaissance missions which under their new name (H.E.L.P) actually proved to be as banal as milk-runs had supposedly promised. With such basic missions he had little opportunity to clash with his new team-mates. At least, that is, until ‘Preliminary Action Negotiating with Ixo Corporation’ (a subsidiary of Roxxon).

“I’m not sharing a bed with him.”

“Look Barton I really don’t care this is all that was available and I have much bigger concerns I’m sure you’ll cope.”

“No I am not sharing a bed.”

“Come on man it’s not like I wanted to share with you. You can sleep on the floor if you prefer just stop whining”.

Clint managed for the most part with the strange flow of information, he had barriers, he had personal space, but sleep removed all that. Asleep he was… vulnerable. It was impossible to maintain the same mental barriers when asleep – he could barely deal with his own nightmares let alone those of the person sleeping beside him. Unfortunately, however, Hand was in no mood to entertain what she saw as mere eccentricities on his part, preoccupied as she was with the mission, the first major one their unit had been assigned since Clint’s joining them – a back-up unit for a larger operation headed by Agent Coulson. Anderson, his team-mate was in even less of a mood to be generous, a recruit from the armed forces and therefore so dismissive of personal space on missions that Clint had begun wearing thick under-armour on his arms just to prevent him loosing focus in action when he was touched to convey something. With the operation tomorrow Clint couldn’t afford not to sleep, but he wouldn’t if he was forced to lie besides Anderson in fear of casual contact all night. He resolved to do as suggested and sleep on the floor. It would lead to funny looks and alienate his team-mates even further but if there was one thing Clint would sacrifice everything for, it was a reason not to touch people. 

They were staying at the hotel under the cover of a conference (hence the very awkward dinner Clint was currently enduring with a bunch of agents all attempting to maintain the cover of friendly co-workers rather than slightly dysfunctional rookies attempting to impress determinedly displeased senior agents). At exactly 0900 tomorrow morning the primary and secondary teams would arrive in seven different staggered groups to the venue, a series of conference rooms rented out by the Ixo Corporation, they would proceed in a fake series of brainstorming activities until 1202, when the primary team and operatives Anderson and Barton would leave the room, leaving the remainder of the secondary team to occupy the staff with questions about team-building facilities. Primary team would use the internal stairwell to descend into the basement and up into the private levels, in order to secure both major security stations and the computer systems. Barton and Anderson would exit the building and split up, with Anderson engaging the security personnel masquerading as reception staff whilst Barton ascended to the previously noted point an set up a snipers nest to watch over the events in case Recon Team A were removed. Once the information had been collected and assets secured, the secondary team (minus Barton and Anderson) were to activate the fire alarms, allowing the operatives inside the building to leave with the evidence in the confusion, re-joining with the other operatives at a secondary location in the city.

That was the plan.

Clint slept terribly. It was not really the floor that was the problem, he had slept much worse places than a slightly grotty hotel floor, even the smell of cigarette smoke and bizarrely Roquefort cheese did not intrude significantly into his sleep more than the odour of animal droppings used to at the circus. The issues were all inside Clint’s head, a carnival of figures who circled him in garish colours, yelling their emotions at him louder and LOUDER and LOUDER and LOUDER and…. Well, needless to say Clint wasn’t feeling his best at breakfast that morning (a limp ham croissant). He could see Agent Coulson, calm and sleek looking across the room, his crisp suit and collected manner an antithesis to what Clint was fairly sure he must look like – an ill-fitting suit in an unflattering shade of grey hanging loosely over tactical clothing that kept a layer of itchy sweat trapped across his skin. A cigarette butt actually fell out of his hair onto his plate half way through the greasy breakfast. Clint blinked owlishly at it and decided to skip the rest of the meal. 

There was a horrible cramping feeling in his stomach that Clint had long ago learnt to associate with danger and whilst his team-mates seemed casually oblivious he had noticed that some of the younger senior staff seemed out of sorts, Hand particularly had fallen into a terse silence that screamed stress to him if apparently not to anyone else. By the time they left for the facility (ten minutes away through light traffic) Clint had thoroughly worked himself up into a quiet internal panic. He satisfied himself with one last cursory check that his bow was still dissembled in the satchel he was carrying before climbing into the taxi and then into the dull grey building. Honestly, anything that dull looking just screamed dodgy to him. 

The three hour pause in which he had to attempt to look interested in imaginary sales projections and contribute to a very confusing discussion about a product he was fairly sure nobody had read the briefing on was not exactly ideal. Even Coulson and Hill seemed to be reaching their limits for enthusiasm as the soporific effect of the dully buzzing air-conditioning and pale yellow lights worked their magic on the very bored agents. The panicked feeling in Clint’s stomach actually seemed to be growing as he started to feel more and more like he had been coated in treacle. A fly landed on Stevenson’s face opposite and he watched with fascination as it began to crawl across his forehead and down his nose, Stevenson himself oblivious to the insect. He was only eventually startled out of this reverie by the timer on Coulson’s phone going off to remind them of the ‘lunch-break’. Clint pulled himself to his feet with difficulty and joined the departing group, feeling as if he were in a dream. He left the primary team behind, exiting down the stairs rather than with the lifts and wandered across the corridor leading to the exit, a dull blanket of tiredness causing him to stumble as a member of staff moved past, bead of sweat gleaming on their forehead and drawing his attention until with a huff he accidentally crashed into the man. A jolt of awareness zinged into life in his brain, racing down his spine and igniting the lingering tension in his belly, the staff member (a security guard? Concierge?) was alive with adrenaline, anticipation and glee curled tight in every pore of their body and echoing across the brief connection that had sparked between Clint hand and the man’s chest. The stranger reacted quickly, brushing Clint off and exiting quickly with an arbitrary apology as Clint sorted through the new rush of power, fading fast but chasing firmly the notion that has sprung from the guard’s head that something would happen to him if he entered the reception area like he had planned. Clint steadied himself and paused for a second, and with a brief glance at the double doors a few metres off, instead ducked through a smaller door in search of an alternative exit. The other agents would never have to know he took a different route.

Out in the sunshine, reached through a smaller service corridor and an unmarked exit with an impressive array of security (even for a dirty corporation) Clint began to feel the surge of concentration that he had gained from the guard push the remaining grogginess out of his body with the help of the warm but fresh(ish) air. He crossed the street and began his ascent to the sniper’s nest, ignoring the easier routes in favour of a more complicated climb to wake him up. On discovering the nest, though, and setting up the collapsible bow, the inferiority of the position began to become very clear. Clint wasn’t sure who had picked the nest, but the sightlines were terrible, giving him only partial views of the reception area, despite its glass walls, and hiding the conference room behind a billboard. If it was any other mission Clint would probably have stayed in the nest and played his part anyway, but the tension he had received from the man he had bumped into, the sense of anticipation, set his teeth on edge. He needed to know what was happening. So, instead of staying put he briefly flashed out a message of confirmation in the direction of the primary post on the other side of the street and then jumped from the his rooftop onto its neighbour, working his way along until he reached a dusty balcony – much further away, but with uninterrupted views of the reception area and a small window into the conference room. He settled down to wait, eyes fixed on the window through which he could see Stevenson slowly eating a sandwich, one finger in his nose.  
Ten minutes later and Clint watched, slightly confused as the entire secondary team exited the conference room as one. This was not a part of the plan – they were not supposed to leave until the fire alarm was activated. He could see Hand as she crossed in front of the window to the door, a blank, empty, expression frozen onto her face. Something was not right. This feeling was inflated as he realised Anderson had vanished from the reception area. He was momentarily distracted however as his comm unit buzzed into life with the voice of Stubbs? Suggs?

“Barton why aren’t you in your position?”

“I think something’s wrong Anderson and the secondary team have just diverted significantly from the plan.”

“Don’t worry about that - why aren’t you where you are supposed to be and where are you instead?” Came the curt reply.

With a jolt Clint slid firmly into danger mode. As far as the other sniper was concerned, he was in position. They shouldn’t have been able to see him even if he’d stayed in the other nest. 

A gun-shot crackled in his hearing aid.


	5. The Curtain Rises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters are like busses. You wait several months for one more and then two come along almost at once.

Something had gone seriously wrong and Clint was seriously not sure what (although he was beginning to have sneaking suspicions that the mission had been a trap. OK not really sneaking suspicions more like loud, clumsy suspicions wearing eye-catching costumes and smacking him round the head with a plank of wood labelled ‘TRAP’). The security guard he’d bumped into had definitely known something was about to happen and now it seemed to have started – Clint could see the armed men ransacking his original nest from where he lay, thankfully out of sight. His gut was screaming at him to cut and run, to leave the unfortunate agents to it and get out of the country, a sensation he hadn’t felt since before SHIELD, since Cairo, since the Swordsman, since his father. He didn’t much care what happened to Anderson, to Hill, even to Hand. But, for the first time since Clint was a little boy, his curiosity was over-powering his fear. If he left now, he’d never understand what made Coulson different. 

Time was of the essence, but Clint wasn’t ready to ignore everything he’d learnt about self-preservation, so the first thing he did on reaching street level was duck into a shop, switching his poorly fitted suit for a hoodie and pair of tight-fitting jeans. He kept the boots (‘always wear good shoes,’ Trick-Shot said, ‘more than any other item of clothing they’ll be important’) and the armoured underclothes he’d been issued, trusting the new clothes to dress down the t-shirt from combat to casual clothes. Hopefully he’d look like any other tourist or guest. The hastily disassembled bow went back in his bag, it was too obvious and Clint was by no means a one-trick pony.

Clint entered the building through another service entrance, relieving a passing IT technician of their lanyard and identification with light fingers. He popped a piece of gum and started chewing, affecting a harried persona as he blustered past the security. First up, find the others. 

He waited until a reasonably deserted stretch of corridor before approaching a rather hulking security guard, whose weapon was definitely non-regulation.

“Jesus they send me to deal with conference C’s computer problems and when I get there the room’s empty! Look I don’t suppose you know where I’m s’posed to go from here man?”

The security guard looked rather surprised to have this directed at him – Clint was beginning to suspect he was a mercenary, he was fifty percent sure they had shot at each other before – but deigned to reply to him at least.

“Conference C has been cancelled. Return to your department.”

Not exactly helpful. Still Clint supposed there was a plan B. ‘You must be prepared to use any means necessary to gain information’ whispered Nat in his mind. He somehow doubted she’d been thinking of what he was about to do but…

Clint gritted his teeth, mentally preparing himself and grabbed the guard by the neck, pulling him into the deserted conference room as he plunged himself into the man’s head. The security guard let out a strangled cry, biting it off as Clint, in a move he had only attempted once before, reached out and began not just to passively accept or defend against the flow of information, but to assert himself into it – breaking the connection between the guard’s thoughts and actions temporarily so that he slumped against Clint.  
FEAR ADRENALINE FIGHT FEAR FEAR screamed the man’s mind as Clint fought his way past the ravaging force of emotions into his memories. 

Big job good pay. Left, right, stairs, fight. A man (who is both Coulson and not) jabs him in the kidneys – Clint and the guard (or is he the guard?) both jerk in pain. Men locked away in a basement room. A strange humming injection that leaves a painful lump in his arm. Multiple faces which he both does and doesn’t recognise, ‘Trickshot’ says the man that both isn’t and is Clint, but Trickshot is dead and Clint can no longer remember who he is. A gunshot and his partner slumps onto the floor, blood pooling in the industrial carpet. An earlier incident, he stands over his father’s body watching the blood slow to a trickle. He has been shot. He clutches his sister to his chest only for her to scream to scream to scream to scream to scream

Clint jerked back, releasing the man who falls to the ground, still caught in the pull of his memories, and struggled to pull his mental shields back into place. He tried to seize on the relevant information – both Coulson and his team and Hand seem to be in the basements, although Hill seemed strangely absent from the picture. FEAR FEAR FEAR screams the man in the corner of Clint’s head. He knows the route to get them, knows where the guards are stationed and what they are armed with, although their faces seem to float in and out of focus. An injection, there had been something about a noise…

Clint bound the security guard’s hands - James, his name is James - and leaves him on the floor, tucked out of sight of the window. Pulling himself together Clint exited the room and walked off down the corridor, trying to exude a sense of purpose as he began to piece together the information into the best route down to the basement without attracting too much attention. Another corner and Clint was approaching the stairwell down, crossing past the lifts well aware that no respectable agent would ever do anything so stupid as to use such a thing in a potentially dangerous situation. Not, as Clint’s traitorous mind supplied, that anyone would ever expect him to use it. No, every mercenary worth their salt would be guarding the stairs, where the greatest threat to their operation would come. Clint smiled to himself and got in the lift. Oh goody his alias ‘Phil Tubbet’s card worked in the machine. He selected the bottom floor and set to work reassembling his bow, fighting against the weariness that had begun to tug at the edges of his concentration. It would be so easy just to stop, to relax and just fall asleep. The gentle hum of the air-conditioning was a lullaby. Soft, smooth…

The realisation came to Clint with a sickening jolt. In a flash he remembered the unit with which his unfortunate mercenary had been injected that morning. He remembered the strange blank expression on Hand’s face as she crossed in front of the window, of the lethargy that had crept into the conference room as they sat there. They had been like flies in amber, reacting so slowly as not to notice the trap which was shutting around them. Somehow, they were being controlled.

Drugs? Some kind of gas in the ventilation? This was the first guess that Clint came up with, but as he desperately searched back through the impostor memories he remembered the little hum the capsule emitted, linked it to the oh so soft noises of the aircon, and removed his hearing aids. Life flashed back into his limbs in an instant – the thick blanket of silence bringing with it the burst of energy he had first experienced on leaving the building. Somehow, they were using the noise to stun the SHIELD operatives. Well, Clint somewhat bitterly thought to himself, let them try that on him. The lift doors slid open with a smooth ping, and Clint was moving.

His bow connected with the head of the man waiting to his left, knocking him to the floor as Clint smoothly brought the bow round and knocked an arrow, swiftly jabbing it into the man on his right before releasing it into the man across the corridor. He raced out dealing blows with every other step, as silent to the unfortunate men as he was to himself – audible only in the soft cracks his fists and bow made with his surroundings, and the soft hiss of arrows sliding into flesh. 

Men, alerted to the attack by some means unknown to Clint, began to surge in through other entrances but Clint was death now. Swift and lethal and unstoppable. Then, suddenly it was just him. Him and one last man whose red mask triggered the security guard’s recollections. Trickshot. But this was not him, auburn hair, bow in hand. The man looked at him, long and hard, as Clint finally recollected him, gasping under the weight of ‘Barney’, silently vanished as Clint sunk to his knees under the weight of the ghosts which suddenly threatened to escape the prisons in his mind. When he looked up, Trickshot, Barney, was gone. 

Clint did the only thing he could think of, reached down to take a security pass from a nearby guard, and opened the door in front of him.


	6. The Hangover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yet again we return to the fic that is spiralling rapidly out of control, rejecting all attempts to keep it at a manageable length and quite probably one more spelling mistake away from gaining sentience and demanding its own apartment. The author has a sneaking suspicion that it might not be possible to finish it in five chapters anymore ;)

The door swung open and Clint brought up his bow, ready to deal with whatever was on the other side, only to drop it as he took in the sight in front of him. The room was cavernous, bare rock walls a strange antithesis to the faded carpets and off-white walls of the corridors that had led him there. The entire back wall was taken up by a bank of out-of-date looking machinery, a vast array of blinking lights and switches which seemed to vibrate slightly under the influence of some unseen force. But most arresting were the bodies. Clint stood frozen in the doorway for a second until Agent Smith lifted his head with a slight groan, eyes rolling back into his head as he slumped back onto the floor. Most of the agents assigned to the mission were lying around on the floor in various states of unconscious, a couple vaguely moving their eyes as he passed while others drooled silently onto the concrete. They weren’t dead as he’d initially feared but, as he surveyed the sea of ashen faces and crumpled limbs, they looked halfway there. All of their equipment seemed to be missing, many of the dazed agents sporting ripped clothing where pockets had been torn open and none of them boasting so much as a paperclip left, let alone any weapons worth a mention.

He moved over to the nearest semi-conscious agent, Anderson, who stared hazily past him with unfocused eyes even when he slapped his face with a gloved hand, before spotting Coulson. Heart hammering out of his chest Clint rushed over to him, repeating his name with as much force as he could in the hope that the man would wake up, would see him, would do anything other than blink slowly into the middle distance. The noise, he had to find and stop the noise and hope whatever it was wasn’t permanent. He glanced over at the machines at the back and decided to test his hunch, dialling down the volume on his left aid and lifting it gingerly into his ear. A wave of nauseas lethargy swept over him as he immediately pulled the aid away from his ear. Whatever it was was a hell of a lot stronger down here and that was enough to persuade him to play his hunch.   
It was on his way over to the machines that he saw it. A single arrow, shaft bent and fletching partially missing, lying in the middle of an empty patch of floor. Not just any arrow. Specifically one of his, one of the first, actually, that he’d bought after leaving the circus. Clint carefully stepped round it, picked up an old office chair that lay abandoned against the back wall and used all of his strength to bring it round on the machines in front of him. Again and again and again. Once all the lights had flickered off, he retried his hearing aids, re-inserting both when it became clear the noise had ended. On his journey back across the floor, with only a slight hesitation, he collected the abused arrow, sliding it into the bag that held his other arrows.

The agents seemed to be recovering slightly in the absence of the noise, a few starting to blink more, breathing evening out slightly, but Clint was concerned generally at the lack of change. He was certain that there were far too many people in the room for him to carry out. Moving back over to Coulson he tried calling his name again, but there was still no response. So, in a fit of desperation, he reached out again, and removing his gloves, placed his finger-tips on his face. He pushed into his mind and yelled ‘Coulson!’ again, simultaneously out loud and in the other man’s head and watched as he jerked back into life, careering forwards with sudden energy before overbalancing into Clint’s waiting arms.

‘Cl-CL- Clint!’ Coulson slurred triumphantly from his new angle. A moment later he flushed, recovering himself slightly and Clint helped him up, trying not to focus on the traitorous part of his mind that was just repeating the way Coulson had said his name.

In a moment, Coulson had straightened himself admirably and was surveying the room with almost a convincing amount of focus, if you ignored the slight shake in his limbs. Clint watched as Coulson assessed the room, before volunteering their location and the source of the fatigue. He didn’t mention his brother. Seemingly reluctant to speak after his previous outburst, Coulson silently went over and started to rouse the drowsy agents, some of which had progressed to jerky, half-aborted movements whilst Clint had been attending to Coulson, whilst many of the unconscious agents appeared to be waking up. Clint copied him, although he refrained from reaching out with his mind again, instinctively shying away from the idea of contact with that many people. Nonetheless, within a few minutes all but a few of the agents were upright, Coulson carrying one and Hand - who unlike the others had been found handcuffed to a table, with the only sign of violence printed on her cheek - supporting another. Clint, as the only truly alert agent, went unencumbered in front, bow in hand. Maria Hill was nowhere to be found.

So, in a slightly drunken caterpillar, the procession of SHIELD agents slowly made its way up the stairs and back up to the surface, finding not a single member of staff or hostile agent on their way up. Instead, they traversed what seemed like mile after mile of deserted corridor and stairwell, emerging into the weak afternoon sunlight without having met a single conscious other person. Still, they made it out, Clint half expecting the building to blow up with every person they didn’t meet.   
Once out, they bundled into taxis, too crippled to do much else, and made their way to the previously agreed meeting point, where they were met with what looked like the full might of SHIELD. 

…

Coulson was exceedingly glad, if somewhat confused, to see SHIELD waiting for them when they arrived. What looked like two entire teams, complete with an irate looking Assistant Director Fury, were buzzing around the hotel in a state of frantic activity complete with a vast array of communications devices which he suspected were being used to coordinate even more resources. He smiled to himself as his taxi pulled up, Fury catching sight of him and moving quickly from anxious to pissed as he quickly ascertained that Coulson was well enough to yell at. Coulson stepped out of the taxi, one part of his mind still quietly checking and counting the agents stumbling out of the other vehicles to check everyone from the basement had made it, and moved over to where Fury was standing impatiently.

“What the hell happened Cheese!” Fury growled, “I had some agent telling me that you’d set off the emergency beacon and then when I ask none of your comms have been online in the last half hour! And why the hell do you all look like you’ve been roofied and mugged this is a godamn intelligence agency not a poorly organised frat trip!”  
Coulson opened his mouth to reply, remembered he knew very little about what had actually happened, briefly considered the massive amount of paperwork this was going to entail, and looked around for Clin- Agent Barton. He was nowhere to be seen.

**Author's Note:**

> Due to uni deadlines expect the update schedule on this to be all over the place - I'll try my best though. 
> 
> Again, not beta-read so by all means comment if you spot any glaring errors. Thanks :)
> 
> Thanks so much for all the lovely comments <3 I absolutely love hearing about what you think


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